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Star Trek (film series) (1979 - present), directed by multiple directors and distributed by Paramount Pictures. Based on the Star Trek television series originally created by Gene Roddenberry in 1966, USA.

[2] Note that the original voice acting is in German, and that passages from the game have been translated by the author.

[3] Note that throughout this book, texts from the book Space Time Play. Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism: The Next Level will be frequently referenced. In fact, Space Time Play – co-edited by this author with two colleagues and published by Birkhäuser Publishers in the fall of 2007 – can be considered a reading prerequisite to and/or a vademecum for this book.

[4] Games such as REXplorer are often and interchangeably called “ubiquitous” or “pervasive” games. IBM introduced the term “pervasive computing” back in 1998 to describe a research and business concept by which computers are embedded into our surroundings. Ten years earlier, the research concept of “ubiquitous computing” had been introduced by Mark Weiser from XEROX Parc (Weiser 1996). The term encompasses the “third wave in computing” (ibid.), in which one person interacts with many computers – as opposed to both the mainframe stage of computing, during which many people shared one computer, and the PC phase, in which a one-to-one rationale was prevalent (i.e. one computer per person – or, of course, one person per computer if we regarded the computer as a resource). Mattern has described the differentiation of the terms ubiquitous computing and pervasive computing as follows: “While [Mark] Weiser uses the term “Ubiquitous Computing” rather in an academic-idealistic way, describing an unobtrusive, human-centric vision of technology, the term “Pervasive Computing” has been coined by the industry with a slightly different emphasis: This term also centers around the idea of permeating and omnipresent information processing, but with the specific short-term goal of utilizing it in e-commerce scenarios and web-based business processes” (Mattern 2003 cit. after Hinske et al. 2007:24).

[5] In Germany, Amstrad computers such as the CPC 464, the CPC 664, and the CPC 6128 with a doubled memory of 128K were marketed by the Schneider company and branded as Schneider computers.

[8] In this context, cf. Asendorf (2004), who discusses movement and the concept of “liquid spatiality” in modern architecture.

[9] Note that in the German language original, Bollnow uses the term “Spielraum,” meaning “play space” or “play.”

[10] Although often defined, interactivity is an ambiguous term whose exact meaning can be hard to capture; a comparison of the very different definitions that have been offered over time reveals as much. In the groundbreaking German book Interaktivität. Ein transdisziplinärer Schlüsselbegriff, edited by Leggewie and Bieber (2004), researchers from diverse backgrounds discuss the concept from their individual scholarly perspectives, which range from the anthropological to the psychological. By comparing the book contributions, Leggewie and Bieber find that the term itself is fuzzy, yet profound, varying in definition and usage from article to article.

Although their book reveals a lack of definitorial grip, Leggewie and Bieber identify three key terms which appear throughout the contributions and which can function as interactivity’s begriffliche Objektträger (2004:14), in English, conceptual slide (Raum, Körper und Interface (ibid.), in English, Space, Body, and Interface (translated by spw)). Note how the three conceptual lenses of player, space, and object correspond with the differentiations we have identified in our discussion of movement and rhythm in architectural theory, in dance notation, and in the section dedicated to the notion of play-as-movement and to-and-fro between player and play-other as proposed by Buytendijk.

[12] Note that the German term Fritz uses is Selbstentäusserung, which would literally translate to self-disposal and which, in both English and German, can also have a negative connotation. In fact, Fritz means to describe a positive feeling and implicitly refers to the concept of flow, which, as we have described, can cause self-detachment, cf. Csizszentmihalyi (1990).

[15] Note that Csikszentmihalyi proposes that not all of the factors need to be present in order for a person to experience flow.

[16] Note that console games are, at least visually and aurally, fully designed environments wherein even unpredictability is predictable given that the player knows and comprehends the rule base and event catalog of the game.

[19] Compare this to Borden’s analysis of skateboarding architecture as an entity co-created by skater and built landscape.

[20] Short for Global Positioning System. GPS is a satellite navigational system formed by 24 middle earth orbiting satellites and their concurrent receivers on earth. GPS was developed and is still maintained by the U.S. Department of Defense, though it was originally named NAVSTAR (Navigation System with Timing and Ranging). By exchanging data among themselves and with a receiver (mounted, for example, in a car), a minimum of three satellites enable the GPS system to calculate the longitude and latitude of the receiver, as well as its height (what does it mean to calculate the receiver’s height?). You can find a variety of GPS and geodetic related resources at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Geodetic Survey Website: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/geodetic_links.shtml.

[21] Translation taken from the revised Logan-Adams translation of Utopia published by the Cambridge University Press in 2002.

[22] Note that some of these activities are illegal and inherently dangerous. Organizations such as the Berliner Unterwelten e.V., society for the exploration and documentation of subterranean architecture, offer guided Berlin-from-below tours, for example, and in the mid 19th century, the Pneumatic Despatch Company built a short-lived transportation system in London with tubes large enough to fit passenger carriages (Samuda 1841).

[30] The Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (known by the acronym CAVE) is an immersive virtual reality environment first developed at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois in Chicago back in 1992. The name CAVE refers to Plato’s cave allegory, of course, which is appropriate for a site where perception, physicality, and illusion meet – and, in this modern CAVE, technology too. In this room-sized cube environment, rear-projected wall images, stereoscopic LCD shutter glasses, and the movements of the CAVE visitor convey a three-dimensional image. Today, CAVEs and CAVE-like environments are being used at universities and research facilities worldwide.

[35] Note: This section stands out from all other sections because its argument is presented from a computer game perspective, as opposed to a physical space perspective. As you will see, this argumentative path is necessary in order to examine the nature of the map-like and mapped play-ground, and is valid because maps are, in themselves, virtual, abstracted, representative spaces, just like computer games.

[36] Bark mulch is not recommended by the author, as it contributes to mold build-up.

[37] The history of the climbing structure – trademarked in 1920 as the Jungle gym – is interesting, as it feeds back into the history of the playground. Jungle gym inventor Sebastian Hinton was a lawyer and son of mathematician Charles Howard Hinton. Hinton is mentioned in Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Secret Miracle and in Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell mostly because he was interested in a fourth dimension and coined the term tesseract to describe a four-dimensional hypercube structure in which four lines spring from each vertex to other vertices. Most likely attempting to build a physical model of the hypercube, Hinton constructed a three-dimensional, multiple-cube bamboo framework in his backyard in Japan while Sebastian Hinton was still a child. Hinton senior theorized that people would never comprehend the fourth dimension while they led their lives in the second, always moving on flat planes. He believed that if people became more comfortable in a real three-dimensional space, the intellectual step to the fourth dimension would be easier. Mimicking a Cartesian-coordinate system in mathematics, Hinton named one set of horizontal poles X1, X2, X3, etc. Those horizontal poles at right angles to the X poles were Y1, Y2, Y3, etc., while the vertical poles were designated as Z1, Z2, Z3, and so on. Hinton senior would then call out coordinates, “X2, Y4, Z3, Go!”, and his children – including Sebastian – would scramble for that intersection. Later, Sebastian explained that he and his siblings were happy to humor their father with these drills, but what they really enjoyed was simply climbing, hanging, chasing, and playing like monkeys. And because that type of play was so enjoyable, he eventually decided he wanted to build such a construction for his own children; the jungle gym was the result (Duran 2006).

Sebastian Hinton’s wife was Carmelita Chase Hinton, who founded the progressive The Putney boarding school in the 1930s. Shortly before she married Hinton, she had been Jane Addams’ secretary at the Hull House, where she took a two-year course on playgrounds (McIntosh Lloyd 1988).

[48] Improvisational theatre in Europe has a long tradition. The Commedia dell’arte (CDA)– or, more to the point, Commedia all’improvviso – originated in Italy in the 16th century, emerging from the tradition of Medieval traveling theater troupes. In the CDA, we find typified characters such as the Harlequin, who often invites the audience to participate in the improvisational play, which usually takes place outdoors, using little or no props and some pre-scripted dramaturgy (Richards and Richards 1990).

Whereas in the CDA, improvisation is transformed into a semi-regulated performance technique, the impromptu theatre tradition on which the CDA was based can still be experienced throughout southern Germany and Austria in the so-called “Volkstheaters.” These types of theaters are similar to community theatres, but are more traditionally oriented and often stage the same piece year after year.

[50] For an overview of social anthropological research related to social network sites, cf. Boyd and Ellison (2007).

[51] The original Latin name of the Colosseum – or Coliseum – was Amphitheatrum Flavium, as construction took place during the reign of the Flavian emperors Vespasianus and Titus between 70-72 and 80 AD. One myth holds that it was designed by a Christian by the name of Gaudentius, though Virgil, who died many years before the Colosseum was built, held that the identity of the Colosseum’s architect was unclear. What is clear is that the construction required an enormous amount of technical and practical architectural and crafting expertise (Hopkins and Beard 2005:144ff.). This expertise must also have been responsible for the designs that are not immediately apparent to the on-site observer – namely, the underground Maze of preparations and storage rooms, of corridors and hoisting shafts, and of lift wells to the trapdoors above, as well as the intricate network of drains (2005:136ff.). In a way, we can think of these structures and technologies as the game mechanics, pumping beasts to the surface and allowing for surprising opponent
spawning.

[52] Of course, the stadium can be inscenated as a spectacle, too. Watching the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, the author had the distinct impression that he was looking at a red-glowing, almost skeletal Bird’s Nest stadium wearing a giant Olympic torch, reminiscent of scenes from The Lord of the Rings movies.

[53] Of course, a field can be used for throwing discs too, as it is in Frisbee and flying disc, cf. Morrison and Kennedy (2006).

[60] Kleinfeld found, upon re-visiting Milgram’s original research notes stored at Yale University, that the claim was not supported by Milgram’s experimental results: 95% of the letters sent out had failed to reach their targets.

[64] Martin Knöll, an architect and doctoral student at the University of Stuttgart co-supervised by the author, and the author are currently preparing the production of YourParkour, a mobile and pervasive game to fight obesity, targeting 12-13 year olds.

[65] Note: For security reasons, we opted against headphones. A mono headphone was also excluded because of the additional cables that the tourist information staff would have had to look after.

[66] As a side note, it is amusing to consider how in this context, the term “utopia” – as in, “a non-place” – takes on a new meaning.

[67] Pirates! was developed in 2000 at the PLAYstudio of the Interactive Institute together with researchers from Nokia Research Center Tampere. In Pirates!, players roleplay ship captains in physical space who “sail” (virtual) seas by moving about in physical space with a handheld computer (their “ship”), seeking (virtual) islands, collecting resources, fighting monsters, and completing game quests and quest tasks. The gameplace of Pirates! must be equipped with WLAN, which the ship client uses to communicate with the game server, and a short range radio system. Stand-alone radio beacons in the gameplace represent the islands to which the players are sailing as well as serving to detect player proximity. Senders attached to the handheld computers allow the system to detect players in range of one another. Thus “what makes Pirates! different from ordinary computer games is that the movement within the game is prompted by the player’s movement in the real world” (Björk and Ljungstrand 2007:256).